


Hoping like this, it's dangerous

by TartCherryJuice



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (I haven't decided yet), Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood, Canonical Character Death, F/F, I will add more tags as it goes, I will also add more character tags too, Possible smut, Violence, Zombies Run! Au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 12:53:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4565391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TartCherryJuice/pseuds/TartCherryJuice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The zombie apocalypse isn't something anyone planned on, but not all is lost. When all hell broke loose, some people decided to go out all by their lonesome, some traveled in groups and never stayed in one place, and others - others banded together to create gated communities. These communities need doctors, engineers, and farmers to survive, but most of all they need Runners. People who venture out and scavenge all they can in the zombie infested world.</p>
<p>A Zombies Run! AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hoping like this, it's dangerous

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a quick warm-up. Honestly I have no idea how this happened. Suddenly there were 4k words and then more just kept happening and now I'm tossing this at you all and hoping for the best! Enjoy and I hope you read the tags!

Silence.

It’s not a sound that Lexa is entirely used to.

The only thing she can hear is the steadfast rhythm of her shoes pounding on the pavement of what used to be a bustling city. A city that was full of people, music, dancing, laughter, _life_ ; but now has been forcibly gagged silent and left to die.

Lexa hardly notices anymore.

After a little over a year of surviving the outbreak of the living dead, she stopped noticing the bagel shop that she used to regularly stop by. Stopped noticing the three round coffee tables sitting outside, rusting yet steadfast. Stopped noticing the large decal decorating the window out front reading, ‘Nancy’s Bread Shop’.

All she sees now is _shelter_.

And not a very good one at that. The window out front would allow anyone, dead or alive, to peek through and see her. The owner, an older gentleman who had inherited the shop from his mother, used to let her take the freshest produce out of the back so she also knew that there was no second exit. No, the bagel shop wouldn’t even be a last resort – just a memory. A fond one.

Washington DC and its outlying suburban counterparts are overgrown with ivy and weeds. Grass peeks through the cracks in the concrete and pavement, green and vibrant in the late summer sun. Any sort of order or color coordination long melted into wild tall fauna.

The common four story brick apartment buildings tightly packed together on the sides of the road are still resolute. Their strong foundations marred only by superficial scars of the zombie breakout. Broken windows, doors ripped off their hinges, miscellaneous and useless personal belongings strewn across the ground. Each building has its own story, either forgotten forever by undead tenants or repressed in the panicked haze of living survivors.

The only thing that hasn’t been affected by the breakout is the sky. The ground, since the beginning of its existence, constantly adapts to the situation at hand. The heavens, on the other hand, do not bow to anyone or anything. The sun and stars have always been there, and they always will be. The sky is predictable, unchanging, and steadfast… and would not survive on the ground.

Lexa’s breathing is even and deep as she jogs through familiar streets. She keeps her jaw slack, her years of track and basketball training making it so she doesn’t have to think much about it. Her running form is perfect, something she had always found pride in and is now grateful for. She is just starting to pick up her pace when a voice suddenly crackles to life in her headset.

“You know when Anya finds out about this, she’s going to kill me.” A familiar masculine baritone filters through the static and she doesn’t falter in her pace. “And then when you get back, she’s going to sick my dead shambling corpse on you.”

Lincoln's voice sounds concerned as he muses his thoughts to her and Lexa understands his worries. Anya probably _will_ kill them. Poor Lincoln’s involvement only being because he was the unfortunate soul to have spotted her active headset marker.

Lincoln tries again. “You do realize how risky it is for you to be outside the gates without a radio operator overseeing, don’t you?”

Weaving through a particularly tight bunch of dead cars on the road, Lexa responds. “I knew you’d be in the booth soon after I left.”

Lincoln sighs and Lexa can imagine his shoulders tensing up at her insolence. “What are you doing out there anyways?”

“I wanted to go for a run.”

“And our training facility, safe inside the gates, just wouldn’t cut it.”

Lexa forces herself to remain impassive at his accusatory tone. Pausing, she takes her time looking through the windows of an old but seemingly untouched Honda Civic, searching for anything useful. When she finds nothing, left only with the grime covering her sleeve from wiping the glass clean, she sets off again.

“We need more bandages and medicine,” she reasons. “The next supply run isn’t scheduled for another week.”

Lincoln scoffs into his microphone, sending and unpleasant popping sound through her eardrums. “We couldn’t survive the next week of possibly licking our wounds? That’s your excuse?”

“Is it such a bad one?” Lexa snaps right back as she rounds a corner to another street of apartments. “To want our people to be safe and comfortable?”

Lincoln sighs again but relents. “How long are you planning on being out?”

“Not long,” Lexa reassures, thankful that he will help her. “There’s a pharmacy about a mile up this road. We didn’t get a chance to thoroughly sweep it the last time we were out.”

“Right,” Lincoln says and Lexa can hear him shifting in preparation to work. “The one you picked with Echo a few weeks ago?”

“Yes,” she affirms, slowing down to a walk when she spots something farther down the road.

There is a group of zombies, maybe nine or ten, banging on the door of a crumbling gas station. Their movements are frantic, desperately trying to break down the door in their weakened rotting state. Normally Lexa would just run by them without fuss, seeing it as an advantage that the group is distracted, but as she cautiously approaches the building more movement catches her eye.

There is a man on the roof. He is wearing a patchwork dark blue jacket and long black pants. Lexa thinks she can see the straps of a backpack as he stands, peering over the lip of the gutters and down at the reanimated corpses below. She can’t see him all that well because of the distance, but she is sure that he is living. His movements are coordinated and smooth.

He must sense her presence, or maybe he is just searching for a solution to his problem, because he glances up. In her crouched position behind an old red pickup truck, the zombies can’t see her, but from his vantage point he spots her immediately. They lock gazes from afar and he tentatively raises his hand in acknowledgement. She doesn’t return the gesture, looking around instead and assessing the scene again.

She is not going to leave him here to die, that she is sure of. Not when he looks relatively healthy and able bodied. Nodding her head resolutely to herself, Lexa lifts her hand and speaks to Lincoln in her microphone.

“Lincoln, I’ve got a situation,” she states.

“Those are not words that you should say without immediate explanation.”

“Give me a second.”

“That is not an explanation,” Lincoln whines, but Lexa ignores him for the moment.

Lincoln continues to ramble into her ear as Lexa creeps out slowly from behind her cover and quickly ducks behind one of the gas pumps. She can hear the eerie moaning of the zombies now. They haven’t noticed her yet, too focused on trying to get to their next meal. Lexa looks them over. There are eleven of them and they are all able to walk.

Good.

“Lincoln,” she whispers, putting a stop to his nervous chatter.

“Jesus Lexa, don’t do that,” he scolds softly. “I only know you’re alive if you talk to me.”

Lexa shrugs off his worry and persists. “There’s a man trapped on the roof of a gas station by some shamblers. The one on the corner of 14th street and Grove. I am going to give him a hand.”

There is a pause as he processes the information. “Okay, do you need a layout of the zone? I can give you a good escape route.”

The moment Lexa had declared the pharmacy her destination, she knew Lincoln had pulled out maps and schematics of the general area in case she got in trouble and needed direction to safety.

“No, I have it handled. I just thought you should know. I’ll check in when I’m finished.”

Lexa slowly slips her backpack off and grabs hold of the end of a crowbar sticking out of the largest compartment. Once in hand, Lexa zips up the black bag entirely and slings it back over her shoulder. Now properly armed, Lexa looks back up at the man she is assisting. He is still watching her from the edge of the roof with curiosity.

Convinced she now has his full attention, Lexa stands up and quietly steps to the small two door vehicle next to the pump she had taken shelter behind. The nozzle is still firmly placed inside the car’s gas tank and the door is wide open. She glances at the zombies to make sure they are still occupied before looking back up at the man. Lexa maintains eye contact with him as she overdramatically gestures to her crowbar and mimes breaking the window of the car.

The man’s eyes go wide at her suggestion, but quickly nods and disappears somewhere farther back on the roof. Probably to a set of stairs or a ladder. She gives the man another moment to get himself situated before taking a deep breath and pulling back her armed hand. Then, with as much force as she can muster, she cracks the crowbar down hard on the glass, completely shattering the window.

The shambler’s reactions are immediate. They all clumsily turn around to investigate the sound and become vibrant at the sight of exposed prey. Lexa doesn’t waste time watching though, instantly turning around and crossing the street into an abandoned hotel.

She makes sure to stay in sight of the zombies as they work their way toward her. Their groans of delight are loud in her ear and her heart is beating with adrenaline as she leads them through the lobby and into an enclosed stairwell. They try their best to follow her up to the third floor, but shamblers are awful with stairs. If given enough time, they would eventually do it, but Lexa is not inclined to give it to them.

She pushes though the heavy door and into a hallway on the third floor. She keeps her eyes peeled for any residual undead around her as she speeds down the dark carpeted walkway. The numbers on the hotel room doors are a blur as she moves, only stopping when she finds a second stairwell on the far side of the building. Trying to be as quiet as possible, she tip toes down the stairs to the ground floor and loops back to the original stairwell. Lexa puts her ear up to the sturdy door and she hears the groaning of the shamblers as they continue to climb the stairs, not realizing that they are now trapped. Now satisfied with her safety, Lexa turns away from the stairwell and makes her way back to the lobby and is surprised to find the man she had just saved waiting for her. Lexa frowns as she approaches him.

He is in a significantly worse state than the one she had last seen him in. His once clean arms and jacket are now stained with brown gunk and blood. He’s holding a small knife in his right hand, also covered in blood. Although, despite his disheveled appearance, when she looks up at his face, long brown hair framing his jawline, he is smiling at her gratefully.

“Thanks for that stranger,” he says as he moves to push his sweaty hair out of his face. His attempt is foiled, however, when his hand meets an obstruction in the form of a radio headset that Lexa hadn’t noticed until now because of the dark atmosphere of the lobby. The man furrows his brow and yanks the headset off before flipping his head back and replacing the piece of equipment like a headband.

So this man comes from an organized community as well. It doesn’t really surprise her. Her township, TonDC, isn’t the only one in the area, but her guard immediately goes up at the realization. Not all the communities are very friendly.

“My name’s Finn,” he announces once he’s situated. He immediately sticks out his hand in greeting, but when he looks down at the state of his attire, thinks better of it and lets his arm drop.

“Lexa,” she nods her head at him and gives him another once over, searching suspiciously for any open wounds. “What happened to you?”

He looks down at himself, grimaces slightly, but then looks back up at her with a charming smile. “There were already a few of those guys in the store. They had broken in from the back. That’s why I hadn’t climbed down the ladder yet. They put up a good fight, one even almost got me–“

Finn starts to pull up his left sleeve to expose his forearm, “but I think my jacket…”

His voices trails off when he lifts the fabric all the way and they both look at the same spot at the eye of his elbow. There, oozing his own blood and trickling down his pale skin, is a distinct bite mark. A sure infection.

His face visibly pales and Lexa has to fight the urge to instantly step away from him, the situation too familiar to her. Finn’s gaze keeps switching from the wound and Lexa in complete disbelief.

“I… I don’t…” he stammers, clutching at his elbow and taking a step back from her. “What am I supposed to do?”

Lexa has to fight down the bile in her throat at the crack in his voice. His eyes are beginning to water and Lexa can only watch as he clamors for some sort of solution to an unsolvable problem. After a few moments of pacing in panic, he becomes still and collapses into a dusty floral couch by the lobby’s cold fireplace. His shoulders hunch and shake with his tears as he reaches up to his headset and presses the button to broadcast his voice back to his own township.

“Hey Ravan…? Raven, can you hear me?” he starts and Lexa is impressed at how he keeps his voice from wobbling.

“Yeah, it’s me, it’s Finn. I got out of the gas station. Yeah, Rae, I got out but… listen,” he pauses a moment to lick his lips. “I got bitten.”

There are a few moments of silence, and either this Raven person is speaking, or is too stunned to say anything at all. Based off the way Finn is speaking to them with such care and affection though, Lexa is leaning toward the latter.

“Raven…” Finn’s voice is breaking again. “There’s nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do. I have to stay out here. I’m not coming back.”

There is a loud sound that, even from her distance away, Lexa can hear from his headset. When it dies down, Finn speaks again. “I love you, Raven. Even if everything got so fucked up in all of this madness, I need you to know how much I love you. You’re my family, Rae, and I don’t want you seeing me turn into a monster. I need you to remember me as I am now. Remember us like when we would sneak some of your mom’s cigarettes and go smoke behind the big tree in your yard. The– the only way I can do this is if you remember me like that.”

He takes a shuddering breath, seeming to revel in the feeling of his lungs expanding and contracting, perhaps wondering how many more times they will be able to do so. There is another pause and Lexa is sure that Raven is speaking this time.

When they are finished, he speaks again. “No, don’t get her. I don’t… I don’t think I have much time left an– and I don’t think I could do this again. It’s you and me, right? Together until the end.”

“I love you, Raven. Remember that. Please never forget that…”

One final pause.

“May we meet again.”

He then swiftly pulls off the headset and places it on the seat beside him, keeping his gaze on the ugly carpet beneath his feet. Lexa approaches him cautiously and, seeming to remember she is there, he picks up the headset again and shrugs off his backpack, offering them to her from his seated position.

“I have no more use for them,” he reasons. “And you tried– no you did save me. I wish I could give you more, but this is all I have to offer.”

Lexa softens her gaze at him, quickly moving to replace her crowbar in her bag before delicately accepting the gifts. They are left to stare each other down in silence, and Lexa notices that he’s already starting to look sick.

“I was wondering if you could do me one last favor,” he says quietly after a time. Lexa nods, willing to try and fulfill a dying man’s last wish. He lifts the bloody knife still in his hand and Lexa is struck cold with the feeling that she knows what he’s going to say next.

“Could you kill me?”

Lexa’s breathe hitches and suddenly, it’s not Finn sitting in front of her anymore. It’s a woman with beautiful dark skin with eyes to match. She is looking at Lexa with such desperation, and whispering with such pleading words, that there is no way that Lexa could refuse. Never before had Lexa been able to refuse the woman she loves what she most desires. It was a habit Lexa never broke, even up until the woman’s dying breath.

Finn is looking at her with the same desperation, and Lexa wonders that if Raven were here, if they would kill the man they loved. Reluctantly, Lexa reaches for the knife and gently pries it out of his hands, nodding.

“If that is what you wish.”

Finn’s eyes harden and he moves to lay down on the couch, arms lying flat at his sides. Even that small movement has caused his breathing to become labored. Giving him a moment to himself, Lexa slowly walks over to the hotel’s greeting counter and places all of her belongings down, save for Finn’s knife. Lexa wipes both sides of the knife down on the edge of the wooden counter, giving her idle hands something to do as she prepares herself for what comes next.

“Lexa?” Finn calls out after a while and Lexa immediately makes her way over to him and leans over the back of the couch, letting him know that she hadn’t left him.

Lexa tries her best to compose a comforting expression on her face, only hesitating a moment before reaching down and smoothing his hair out of his eyes. He has begun to sweat and his breathing is still haggard, but he manages to smile up at her in the same charming way as before.

“Thought you left me for a minute there,” he states as she rounds the couch so she can reach him better. She crouches down and he turns his head to keep eye contact with her.

“That’s not the kind of person I am,” Lexa affirms.

“No,” he looks to the ceiling again. “No, you’re one of the good ones.”

Lexa would beg to differ, nobody is one of the good ones, but she isn’t about to argue her teetering morality with a man on his death bed. Soon, though, there are tears in his eyes again and streams of the salty liquid pouring down the sides of his face.

A sob racks his body before he huffs out quietly, “I’m scared.”

Lexa’s heart breaks for a young man she doesn’t know. She can tell a fever is starting to assault his body, sending shivers up and down his muscles, trying to fight away the deadly infection. If Lexa didn’t do this for him, he would lie in agony for hours, if not days, before he would finally die and reanimate.

She sits up more on her knees and hovers over his face, knife tucked behind her back and out of his sight. Lexa searches for words of comfort, but like last time, a similar pair of brown eyes looking at her, she finds none.

“Death isn’t the end, Finn,” she tries. “It is a new beginning. One that all of us will eventually have.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.” He smiles again, but it is much more subdued and watery this time. “A fresh start.”

“Exactly,” Lexa says and adjusts herself one final time, making it easy for him to keep his gaze on her face when she…

“Are you ready?” she asks softly.

Fresh tears form as he looks at her. She can tell that the infection is already starting to take its toll, his eyes are glassing over and he is shaking uncontrollably. His jaw clenches tight and he nods in affirmation, giving her permission to end his life.

“I’m right here,” Lexa gently holds his cheek when he tries to watch her move the knife from behind her back. “Keep your eyes on me, okay?”

He doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t expect him to, but he does as he’s told. Keeping their gazes locked, Lexa moves her arm and hovers the knife at the base of his neck, keeping the cold metal away from the skin. His throat bobs and his eyelids are beginning to flutter closed in pain.

“You’re going to be okay,” Lexa states confidently before plunging the knife through the skin of his neck.

His eyes widen a moment, keeping his gaze on her the entire time as Lexa watches them slowly dull until Finn is only a memory. Lexa lets herself study the young man for a moment longer, unmarred and peaceful in death, before moving the knife up to his temple and sinking the knife in again, effectively stopping him from ever reanimating.

Lexa flops back down on the heels of her feet, letting out a shuddering breath of her own before standing up on wobbling knees. She reaches down and carefully pulls eyelids shut over brown irises. Just like last time.

Lexa clears her throat, trying to rid the wet emotion from her chest, but it persists somewhere deep and impenetrable. She takes a few steps towards the bags, her shaky legs becoming more solid with each stride.

“Lincoln,” she speaks through her headset as she steps up to the counter. “I’m finished.”

His response is immediate and relieved. “So you got him out?”

Lexa shoots a fleeting glance toward the couch and stashes Finn’s headset into her own bag. “More or less.”

“But you’re okay, right?” Lincoln questions at her ambiguous answer.

“I am unharmed,” she reassures her friend as she pulls her bag securely over her shoulder and moves to unzip Finn’s. She lets out a single, bitter laugh when she yanks the compartment open and sees its contents. It is filled to the brim with sterile gauze, antiseptic, and antibiotics.

“And I’m headed back.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hoping to do a weekly or bi-weekly update schedule, but school starts again soon so we'll see. 'lexacomeback' over on tumblr.


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